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The Handmaid's Tale Research Paper

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The handmaid 's tale is a dystopian novel written by Margaret Atwood that focuses on oppressing women, abusing them and using them for reproduction and solely nothing else. The idea of raping women to get them pregnant in this book is not a problem in their society. The whole idea of giving women the same rights and equal chances as every other gender is not believed in this society. In today 's world, this way of treating women is not a realistic idea. Women today have rights and are still fighting for more. But if this book were to be written before women rights had existed and before the women rights movements than the book wouldn 't have seemed so grotesque and unbelievable. In the day and age were raping your wife was okay, Margaret Atwood …show more content…

The book when reading at our current time seems so horrible and torturous that we don 't think it could ever really happen. But I think read back before women 's rights the shock factor of the book wouldn 't be so big no matter how she would have written it. Doing research on how it was for women before they had rights in our country, it honestly wasn 't so far fetched from the book. Obviously not so extreme and without the big religion part of it, but women didn 't talk out much or at all. They didn 't have jobs or anything, they just did housework and garden work. What Margaret Atwood would have to include in her novel would be something not so crazy as rape and physical abuse, even though that sounds crazy now, it was not so crazy before women’s rights. She would have to include the Handmaid 's not being able to do anything. She would have to make the shock factor that the Handmaids just sat in a room like dogs waiting to be raped. Being fed once in awhile, not going outside, reading, writing, cleaning or anything but being raped for reproduction. By making the Handmaid’s just beings being literally pets to men, then that is what would shock the people back then and make them think that a change was to be needed to make sure a society like that would never even be a

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What would become of the world, if our current societal flaws, such as sexism, racism, and classism were ingrained and executed at a systematic level? This is exactly what The Handmaid’s Tale set out to explore. The novel, which claims to be speculative fiction, is set in the theocratic Republic of Gilead (formerly the USA), where birth rates are rapidly declining and women have been marginalized by the patriarchal regime, forbidden to read, write or love and valued only if they are able to procreate. They are separated into classes, including Wives, Marthas, Aunts, Unwomen, and Handmaids, distinguishable only by the color of their clothing. The Handmaids are renamed by combining ‘of’ and the name of the Commander that they have been assigned to, stripping them of any individuality.

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In The Handmaid’s Tale, the novel critiques gender inequality and autocratic authority. The hierarchical class of men consists of Commanders, Angels, and Guardians. In particular, the Commanders are the highest-ranking social group in Gileadean society. The Commanders are represented as powerful men. They have leadership roles, autocratic governance, and are oppressors controlling the Gilead regime.

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